They travel abroad, especially when the president isn’t ready to commit to some sort of deal with another country but wants to send a high-level emissary.Al Gore, for instance, led a “reinventing government” effort for President Bill Clinton. They lead commissions and other efforts on particular topics as a way for the president to show focus on that area.And modern threats mean it’s crucial to always have someone ready to step in during a crisis, he said.Īside from breaking tie votes in the Senate and stepping in when the president can’t fulfill his responsibilities, vice presidents have developed these new responsibilities: The expanded role of the federal government makes having a capable successor more important than it was at the country’s dawn, Goldstein said.
The American vice president in recent administrations could be called a major understudy for the president. “Carter thought it was simply appalling to have the person (who was) a heartbeat away not be up to speed,” Goldstein said. His vice president, Harry Truman, had to be pulled aside and told of the country’s secret plan to build an atomic bomb. (State Dept./Buck Insley)Ĭarter was partly motivated by hearing about what happened when President Franklin D.
A list of us vice presidents upgrade#
It was a radical upgrade for the office that has been continued by subsequent presidents, Goldstein said. He could pop into the Oval Office any time he wanted to see Carter and was included in meetings and decisions. Mondale, not relegated to the Senate, got his pick of prime office space in the White House’s West Wing. He used Walter Mondale as a true partner and adviser, according to Goldstein. As a businessman, Carter felt the country should benefit from the person occupying the position of vice-president. Over recent decades, presidents themselves have chosen to broaden the job, starting with Jimmy Carter, who was elected president in 1976 as a Washington outsider. “Geography matters less and experience matters a lot more,” Devine said. Those are now much less important considerations in picking a vice president, according to Devine. In earlier years, vice presidents were chosen to give ideological or geographic balance to the presidential nominee’s campaign for election. Goldstein, emeritus professor at the Saint Louis University School of Law and an expert on the vice presidency. “For most of the 19th century, the vice president was primarily a legislative position and presided over the Senate as a full-time occupant,” said Joel K. Senate and a role as the chief presiding officer there, so the first American vice presidents spent most of their time there. The Constitution gives the vice president the tie-breaking power in the U.S.
Constitution originally envisioned a very small role for American vice presidents. (© AP Images) Constitutional underpinnings Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, left, and President Gerald Ford confer in the Oval Office in the White House in 1974. Gerald Ford, who chose Rockefeller, illustrated just how important vice presidents can be when he moved into the top job.
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